Project description:Cyanobacteria are increasingly being considered for use in large-scale outdoor production of fuels and industrial chemicals. Cyanobacteria can anticipate daily changes in light availability using an internal circadian clock and rapidly alter their metabolic processes in response to changes light availability. Understanding how signals from the internal circadian clock and external light availability are integrated to control metabolic shifts will be important for engineering cyanobacteria for production in natural outdoor environments. This study has assessed how “knowing” the correct time of day, via the circadian clock, affects metabolic changes when a cyanobacterium goes through a dark-to-light transition. Our data show that the circadian clock plays an important role in inhibiting activation of the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway in the morning. Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 is a genetically tractable model cyanobacterium that has been engineered to produce industrially relevant biomolecules and is the best-studied model for a prokaryotic circadian clock. However, the organism is commonly grown in continuous light in the laboratory, and data on metabolic processes under diurnal conditions are lacking. Moreover, the influence of the circadian clock on diurnal metabolism has been investigated only briefly. Here, we demonstrate that the circadian oscillator influences rhythms of metabolism during diurnal growth, even though light–dark cycles can drive metabolic rhythms independently. Moreover, the phenotype associated with loss of the core oscillator protein, KaiC, is distinct from that caused by absence of the circadian output transcriptional regulator, RpaA (regulator of phycobilisome-associated A). Although RpaA activity is important for carbon degradation at night, KaiC is dispensable for those processes. Untargeted metabolomics analysis and glycogen kinetics suggest that functional KaiC is important for metabolite partitioning in the morning. Additionally, output from the oscillator functions to inhibit RpaA activity in the morning, and kaiC-null strains expressing a mutant KaiC phosphomimetic, KaiC-pST, in which the oscillator is locked in the most active output state, phenocopies a ΔrpaA strain. Inhibition of RpaA by the oscillator in the morning suppresses metabolic processes that normally are active at night, and kaiC-null strains show indications of oxidative pentose phosphate pathway activation as well as increased abundance of primary metabolites. Inhibitory clock output may serve to allow secondary metabolite biosynthesis in the morning, and some metabolites resulting from these processes may feed back to reinforce clock timing.

Project description:BackgroundConverting carbon dioxide (CO2) into value-added chemicals using engineered cyanobacteria is a promising strategy to tackle the global warming and energy shortage issues. However, most cyanobacteria are autotrophic and use CO2 as a sole carbon source, which makes it hard to compete with heterotrophic hosts in either growth or productivity. One strategy to overcome this bottleneck is to introduce sugar utilization pathways to enable photomixotrophic growth with CO2 and sugar (e.g., glucose and xylose). Advances in engineering mixotrophic cyanobacteria have been obtained, while a systematic interrogation of these engineered strains is missing. This work aimed to fill the gap at omics level.ResultsWe first constructed two engineered Synechococcus elongatus YQ2-gal and YQ3-xyl capable of utilizing glucose and xylose, respectively. To investigate the metabolic mechanism, transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis were then performed in the engineered photomixotrophic strains YQ2-gal and YQ3-xyl. Transcriptome and metabolome of wild-type S. elongatus were set as baselines. Increased abundance of metabolites in glycolysis or pentose phosphate pathway indicated that efficient sugar utilization significantly enhanced carbon flux in S. elongatus as expected. However, carbon flux was redirected in strain YQ2-gal as more flowed into fatty acids biosynthesis but less into amino acids. In strain YQ3-xyl, more carbon flux was directed into synthesis of sucrose, glucosamine and acetaldehyde, while less into fatty acids and amino acids. Moreover, photosynthesis and bicarbonate transport could be affected by upregulated genes, while nitrogen transport and assimilation were regulated by less transcript abundance of related genes in strain YQ3-xyl with utilization of xylose.ConclusionsOur work identified metabolic mechanism in engineered S. elongatus during photomixotrophic growth, where regulations of fatty acids metabolism, photosynthesis, bicarbonate transport, nitrogen assimilation and transport are dependent on different sugar utilization. Since photomixotrophic cyanobacteria is regarded as a promising cell factory for bioproduction, this comprehensive understanding of metabolic mechanism of engineered S. elongatus during photomixotrophic growth would shed light on the engineering of more efficient and controllable bioproduction systems based on this potential chassis.

Project description:In the unicellular cyanobacterium, Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942, essentially all promoter activities are under the control of the circadian clock in continuous light (LL) conditions. Here, we employed high-density oligonucleotide arrays to explore comprehensive profiles of genome-wide Synechococcus gene expression in wild type, kaiABC-null and kaiC-overexpressor strains under LL and continuous dark (DD) conditions. In the wild type strain more than 30% of transcripts significantly oscillated in a circadian fashion, peaking at subjective dawn and dusk. Such circadian control was nullified in kaiABC-null strains. Although KaiC has been proposed to globally repress gene expression, our analysis revealed that dawn expressing genes were upregulated by kaiC-overexpression, such that the clock was arrested at subjective dawn. Transfer of cells to continuous dark (DD) conditions from LL immediately suppressed expression of most of genes, while the clock keeps time even in the absence of transcriptional feedback. Thus, the Synechococcus genome seems primarily regulated by the light/dark cycles and dramatically modified by the protein-based circadian oscillator. Keywords: timecourse data (~48 hours under continuous light or darkness) from Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 (wild type, kaiABC-null, and inducible kaiC-overexpressor) strains Wild type (WT), kaiABC-null (Dkai), and inducible kaiC-overexpressor (oxC) S. elongatus PCC 7942 strains were analyzed under continuous light (LL), continuous dark (DD) using Affymetrix high-density oligonucleotide microarrays (GeneChip CustomExpress Arrays) representing predicted 2,515 protein-coding genes on the genome of Synechococcus elongatus PCC 6301, which can be used also to the almost homologous strain, S. elongatus PCC 7942: Two independent experiments in WT under LL (hours 0 to 52) and DD (hours 0 to 48); Two independent experiments in Dkai under LL (hours 0 to 48); Two independent experiments in oxC under LL in the presence or absence of an inducer, IPTG, from hour 25 to 33 in LL; a single experiment in WT under DD in the presence of an transcriptional inhibitor, rifampicin.

Dataset Information

The circadian oscillator in Synechococcus elongatus controls metabolite partitioning during diurnal growth.

Publications

The circadian oscillator in Synechococcus elongatus controls metabolite partitioning during diurnal growth.

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